Week in tech: jailbreaks ahoy, mechamice, comedians, and copyright

Ars recaps the week's top stories from the worlds of science, open source, and …

We're approaching the dog days of summer in the northern hemisphere, and tech news shows no signs of cooling down.

Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are "fair use": Every three years, the Library of Congress approves a handful of exemptions to the DMCA, allowing consumers to break or bypass DRM in particular instances. On the list this time: jailbreaking an iPhone, ripping clips from a DVD, and investigating SecuROM on computer games.

Overkill as art: Ars reviews the Cyborg R.A.T. 7: It's not easy to justify a $100 price tag for a gaming mouse, but the R.A.T. 7 is adjustable in both size and shape, features multiple levels of DPI control, and offers more options than anything else on the market.

Microsoft should cut out the middlemen, build its own phones: Microsoft has long been a software company: it builds the software, and lets third parties build the hardware. It's a model that has served the company well. But if it wants to be a serious player in the phone market, that needs to change.

GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011: The developers behind the open source GNOME desktop environment have decided to postpone the release of GNOME 3 until March 2011. Development is progressing rapidly, but the software is still not quite ready yet.

Mozilla's Tab Candy is the first step to sweeter browsing: Mozilla's new Tab Candy project is bringing a major boost to the tabbed browsing experience in Firefox, but there is still room for more improvement. Ars looks at Tab Candy and some compelling third-party add-ons that offer ideas for where tabbed browsing could go next.